


Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed

by someinstant



Category: Inception
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-28
Updated: 2010-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-10 20:19:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/103864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someinstant/pseuds/someinstant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everybody knows the dice are loaded.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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* * *

** _First layer down._ **

She didn't think about the symbolism much, at first: Cobb's top, Eames' pen, Arthur's die. Her pawn was an inside joke between herself, awake, and herself, dreaming-- but she truly hadn't wondered if the others' totems were similarly weighted with meaning, or just with a particular quantity of ounces. Ariadne only really considered the question after Yusuf absently raised his cloudy chip of amber to his nose while she explained the design for a maze of one-way streets in the first layer of the dream. Yusuf caught her puzzled look.

"Habit," he told her, and shrugged. "And it smells like home, which is nice."

"Is that why you chose it?" Ariadne asked, curious. A smell was a very good idea: something unique and instantly recognizable. It would probably be difficult to get a scent exactly right in the dream. She had never noticed anything odd about the dream-world on an olfactory level, but now that she thought of it, she wasn't certain that anything even _had_ a scent in the dreams. She could remember the tang of bitter coffee on her tongue at the café with Cobb in her first dreaming, but she wasn't sure she could remember a smell. Odd. Something to keep in mind about the designs, she thought, although smells might be like the weather, dependent upon the dreamer's subconscious, and not the architect's planning. Cobb would know, or Arthur. She'd ask Cobb.

"In part," Yusuf answered, evasive. He slid the splinter of amber into the inner pocket of his jacket. "A very small part. Why did you choose a pawn?"

"I like chess," Ariadne answered. She didn't say, "I have an overdeveloped sense of metaphor," but assumed Yusuf heard it anyway. She had been briefly tempted by an empty wooden spool, but had decided that a very general sort of symbolism was preferable to the personally exact.

"We will have to play, sometime, then," Yusuf said, a razor's edge on his grin. "Cobb and I play a little every now and then in the evenings, but he likes a defensive game. Me, I like an opponent who will take risks."

"One who will play into a trap, you mean." Ariadne shook her head, dismissive. "No thanks. I think you could beat me in about five minutes. Now," she said, and backed out of the conversational dead-end and back into the business district. "I was thinking about escape routes,"she pointed at a gap in the mock-up. "I could use a roundabout here as a return point on a closed loop. If you have to lose a tail, or need a quick switchback on the way to the bridge, you take the roundabout, turn off to this access road, and it'll take you back to a point before the traffic circle."

Yusuf shook his head, forgetting chess for a moment. "It's too sealed off, I think," he said, considering the long narrow alleyway. "If there are projections blocking us at either end, we would be in a pile of shit."

Ariadne chewed on her bottom lip. She'd been worried about that, actually. "If," she started, then stopped. "I don't know how to design it without breaking physics, up here," she said, and reached for the sketch pad on the table. She wasn't very talented when it came to drafting-- there were reasons she wasn't studying architecture _qua_ architecture-- but she could trace out a quick graphite model of the illusion she had in her head without much trouble, ignoring the metal screech of a door somewhere behind her.

"There," she said, adding a final line to close off one of the walls. "I was thinking about this last night, I don't think I can build a model for it-- but. If the access road won't work, maybe this will." She thrust the paper into Yusuf's hands. "Look. Three alleyways instead of one, but walls in between are illusions based on the angle. Trace it out, and the wall is actually the side of this first alley. So if you turn down that way, it'll loop you around to the the wall between the second and third access points, which which means at some point you'll be driving on the alley wall before it becomes the main drag again." She traced the path with her finger, rising up on the balls of her feet and pointing. Yusuf hummed, following the route her finger took. "If you take the third, the loop drops you between the first and second alleys. And if you take the middle route-- actually," she admitted, leaning over Yusuf's arm, "I don't know where that one goes yet."

"Better figure that out," said Arthur, setting a cardboard box gingerly down on a stool behind Ariadne and brushing against her back. She jumped. "Blivets are a good trick, but you don't want any holes."

"Jesus," she said, trying to sound irritated instead of startled. Arthur always did that to her: she was calm, the world made sense, and then he'd walk in the room and her lungs wouldn't quite work. Worst of all, Arthur never acknowledged her discomfort-- which she knew had to be a matter of choice, and not obliviousness. Arthur didn't miss anything. "When did you get here? And what's a blivet?"

Arthur ignored her first question, but answered the second. "A blivet's what you're talking about, I think. [The devil's pitchfork](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fd/Blivet.svg/200px-Blivet.svg.png). I didn't teach you that one," he said, leaning over to consider her sketch. "Nice. Been studying your Escher?"

"I had an impossible coloring book when I was little," she told him, and caught the folded bed sheet he tossed at her head. "It kept me busy during car rides."

"Better cover it," Arthur told her, tilting his head to indicate the mock-up. He looked obscurely pleased. "You know Yusuf's the only one who should know all the details for the first layer."

"And he _was_ the only one," Ariadne pointed out, "until you wandered in here without letting me know ahead of time."

Yusuf rolled his eyes. "I think I will go in search of lunch, and more convivial company. I do like the roundabout idea," he told Ariadne, gathering up a heavy canvass coat from one of the mesh lounge chairs. "You will have to show me the alleys in a dream, I think, before we can decide if they will work."

"Thanks," she said, glad her designs weren't completely useless. "We can try that tomorrow." She shook out the sheet, throwing an end over the foam board city and watching it disappear under the wave of cotton. Arthur was rummaging in the box behind her, ignoring them both.

"Excellent." Yusuf gathered his things and turned to go. "Oh, and by the way, Ariadne," he said, walking to the door, "I think you are lying about your chess game. I think you are probably much better than you say you are."

"I might be," Ariadne agreed, and Yusuf's teeth shone in the warehouse's perpetual twilight. "But that still doesn't mean you wouldn't beat me."

"We will have to play, then," he called back over his shoulder as he pushed open the door to the world outside. "And then we will see."

Ariadne didn't answer; the door had already closed behind him. She slid her sketch pad with the wire outline for the alleys-- the blivet-- back under the sheet with the mock-up. Arthur pushed a small plastic box into her hands as she turned around. "Put that on the other table, please. Carefully; the stuff inside isn't cheap." Ariadne took it, hearing the rattle of glass inside as she set it down.

"So," she said, annoyed for no reason she could really untangle. "What's the plan? I thought I was supposed to be designing the levels all this week. Cobb told me I needed to be finished by next Thursday."

Arthur blinked, unperturbed. "You do." He reached back into the box, pulling out a familiar aluminum case, setting it on the empty workstation, and thumbing open the clasps. "But you also need to know how the hardware works, and why. You won't be going in after Fischer with us, so you're not responsible for working out the chemistry beforehand-- that's Yusuf's job-- or finagling the hardware-- that's me-- but you should know how to calculate a dose and how to fix the pump if it jams in case anything goes wrong during the set-up work. That sort of thing." His hands went to his wrists, deftly unbuttoning the cuffs and rolling back the sleeves. "Nuts and bolts stuff."

Ariadne nodded, and felt her annoyance ebb away. "Right," she said. "My dad made me memorize the parts of the engine and change the oil on his car before he taught me to drive."

"Did it make you a better driver?" Arthur looked genuinely curious. It was an odd look on him; Arthur was rarely genuinely anything.

Ariadne shook her head, then shrugged. "I hit the mailbox backing out of the driveway five times before I went away to college. I mostly take the train, now."

"We'll have to work on that," Arthur said, passing her a pair of blue latex gloves. "Getaway skills are useful in this line of work. Pull your hair back," he instructed, looking at her critically. "Get rid of the scarf. This is going to be like lab in high school, only with the potential to fry your brain if you get the proportions wrong or get your hair caught in the works."

"Please tell me we don't have to wear goggles," she said, searching around in her bag until she found a hair tie. "I looked like a dork in them."

"Everyone looks like a dork in goggles. Which is why we have these incredibly stylish safety glasses instead." Arthur showed her the heavy plastic glasses while she struggled to loop the elastic around her ponytail; it had stretched the last time she'd used it, and wanted to let her hair escape. "So what's this about chess with Yusuf?" he asked as he stretched the blue gloves over his hands. "I wouldn't play any games for money with him if I were you."

Ariadne tossed her scarf on top of her bag. "We were talking about totems," she said. Arthur had seen her slide the pawn into the pocket of her jeans a few days before; he hadn't asked about it, but she knew he'd seen the little brass piece before she'd hid it away. "He wanted to know if I was any good at chess."

"Are you?" This was muffled, as Arthur had looped a surgical mask over his ears and pulled out a pair of safety glasses. There was a matching mask and a second pair of glasses set out of the table for her.

"Pretty good," she said absently, made nervous by the mathematical precision of Arthur's movements as he removed three sealed glass vials from the plastic box. "Christ, you'd think we were building a nuclear reactor. What's in this stuff?"

"Nothing poisonous, exactly, but you don't want to get it on your skin," he told her. He tapped one of the clear glass cylinders with a latex-covered fingernail. "The left hand vial especially. This one's the dream agent. Barbiturate with a few other things thrown in-- Yusuf could tell you what, exactly-- but it can be absorbed through the skin if you're an idiot and handle it without gloves, which will knock you into a nice drug-induced coma for a few weeks if you're lucky, or kill your brain function if you're not." He picked up the vial and swirled the liquid inside around, obviously too familiar with the drug to be visibly concerned by its presence. "Plus," he added, putting the vial back on the table, "all of this stuff is murder on clothes, so watch it."

"What, we don't get lab coats?" she said, sarcastic. But she put on her gloves and mask and glasses, because she was learning that there was nothing safe here; not in the dreams and not out of them.

"Not today." The mask made it impossible for her to see if he was smiling, but his eyes narrowed a little at the corners behind the clear plastic glasses. "The only coats we've got clash with my tie."

"God forbid."

"I'm sure he does." Arthur motioned for her to stand in front of the open aluminum briefcase, and handed her an extremely delicate screwdriver. "Right," he said, moving to stand behind her, close enough that she thought she could feel the heat of his body along her back. "No drugs just yet. The first thing you're going to do is take off the machine casing." He pointed to the screws holding the cover in place. "Once you know how the drip works, I'll show you how to calculate a dose and how to time it."

"If we're not dealing with the scary knockout drops right now," she said, her breath bouncing back off of the mask in humid pulses as she started to work on the screws, trying to ignore the presence of his body so close to hers, "why are we dressed up like Bill Nye?"

"It's not doing anything for you? I don't know," he said, dropping his voice in a parody of seduction, "I've always had a thing for rubber gloves." Arthur was wearing his mask, so she knew she couldn't _really_ feel the damp heat of his breath against her neck, but she had always had an excellent imagination and this-- the thought, _Arthur's mouth is near my neck_\-- was enough to make her shudder a little.

Arthur must have noticed (Arthur _always_ noticed), because he rested a hand lightly on her waist, his thumb a warm pressure against the curve of her ribs. Ariadne held her breath. "Maybe I just _really_ like girls in glasses," he said, his voice low and amused. There was knowledge in that voice: the sound of something who has found a piece of a puzzle and knows exactly where it fits. "Maybe--"

"Maybe you're a prick who should stop panting in my goddamn ear," she said, fed up and frustrated, and jabbed her elbow backwards with as much force as she could muster. She telegraphed the hit, though, and her arm met nothing but air.

"Not a bad move," he said from several feet behind her, assessing. The heat was gone. Arthur's voice was pleasant and impersonal, and she felt like a butterfly on a pin. "You've taken a self-defense course?"

"You're testing me," she said, annoyance and something she couldn't name bubbling back up in her. "Right. Fuck. Of course you are." She slapped the handful of screws she'd removed from the case down on the workstation surface and turned around to face him. "I took a self-defense course my first semester in college. The streetlights where I lived went out a lot and it made me nervous, so I signed up for a class at the rec center. I've never actually had to hit someone. I've never shot a gun. I'm okay with blood, unless it's my own, and then I tend to pass out," Ariadne continued, sharp. "I wear contacts, I'm writing my dissertation on the subjective character of spatial experience-- assuming my committee is ever all on the same continent again to approve my proposal, I don't like fish, I'm allergic to cats, and I'm the only one in my family who can read a map, let alone fold it up again when I'm done with it. I like Borges, I hate the Brontës, I have no idea why Miles gave Cobb my name, and I think you're probably going to have a mental breakdown someday when you finally grow up and realize you're not, actually, a member of the Rat Pack."

She lifted her chin, conscious she looked ridiculous: short and grubby in the jeans she'd ripped helping Heloïse move into her flat six weeks ago, her hair falling out of its tie in straggles, not helped at all by the gloves and mask and smeared plastic glasses. Arthur should have looked ludicrous as well, wearing his dress shirt and stupid skinny tie with all the lab paraphernalia-- but he didn't. It was infuriating. "Do you need to know anything else, or does that cover it?"

Arthur tilted his head, considering the question. He didn't seem offended by her outburst, or surprised by it in the least. "Are you sleeping with Cobb?" he asked. His tone was-- there wasn't a tone. There was nothing. He could have been asking if she flossed, or if she liked her tea with lemon.

Ariadne jerked her head back. "What kind of question is that?" she asked, too startled by the question to be offended.

"One that matters," Arthur said, raising a shoulder slightly. "You've been staying late, the past few days. So has Cobb."

"So?" She wasn't startled anymore; she was confused and unsettled and guilty. "We were working," she lied. If anyone should know about Mal, it was Arthur: it was unsafe for Cobb to go into the dreams with Mal locked in his own personal dungeon, unsafe for all of them. But Cobb knew the dreams better than she did and if he wouldn't talk to Arthur about the dangers, she wasn't going to do it for him.

Arthur's eyes met hers, darkly amused. "You're lying," he said easily. "But I get it, it's your business who you're sleeping with," he continued, as though he didn't really care one way or the other. "You should just know that Cobb's-- he's great, he's the best I've ever worked with," he said, and Ariadne could hear the bone-deep loyalty in his voice, "but he's really fucked up. You saw how he is about Mal," he said, serious. "It's not good. He's doing this job because he's desperate, and he's making mistakes because of it. I don't think he made a mistake bringing you in," Arthur concluded, "I think you're going to be really good at this, amazing, maybe better than all of us, but I could be wrong. We were wrong about Nash, and it's not safe to make those sort of mistakes in this business."

Ariadne felt the knots in her shoulders ease. Arthur already knew about Mal-- maybe not the particulars, but he understood enough-- and she was going to be _really good at this, amazing_. It was nice to hear. More than nice. She opened her mouth to tell him that she wasn't like Nash, that she'd try her best to be enough (_amazing_, her brain insisted), but instead she blurted out, "I'm not sleeping with him," and was relieved when he ignored her blush, nodded, and said, "Good."

She turned back to the briefcase and, flustered, continued detaching the casing. Arthur watched her, comfortably silent, pointing out the hidden screws she'd missed. Ariadne thought, _And now we'll ignore the last ten minutes, and be complete professionals_, relieved he'd let her outburst disappear into the conversational ether.

It wasn't until an hour later, as she was tightening the little cap on the stopper solution reservoir in the case, that Arthur finally said, "The Rat Pack? Seriously?"

"Shut _up_," she said, embarrassed. "You were pissing me off. I blame your tie."

Arthur looked at the tail of his tie. It was matte black and inoffensive. "I can see how it would enrage you."

"Yes, well," she said. "It's the skinny tie and the suits and the loaded die. It's all very _Ocean's Eleven_ circa 1960."

He almost laughed at that. Almost. Not quite. "Is that a bad thing?" he asked.

"No. Maybe. I have no idea," she said, hoping he'd let it go. "The stopper's done. What do I do next?" she asked.

Arthur leaned his hip against the table and looked at her, both eyebrows raised. After a moment, he shook his head slightly and said, "All right, Ariadne," and handed her the dream agent. "Next step."

_ **Second layer down.** _

She liked the sharp angles in the bar. It felt clean and crisp, minimal with luxury, the kind of bar where the son of a billionaire industrialist might sit and have a drink and brood about the future. The light was good, too: she wanted lots of windows, and diffused white sunlight. Drinking in the dark was a sad bastard activity, and Robert Fisher seemed like the type who'd say he was melancholy, rather than depressed. That sort of refined brooding required light, and space, and openness.

Overall, it wasn't the sort of bar she'd ever visit on her own-- she wasn't in the tax bracket that could afford this kind of no-price-on-the-wine-list atmosphere. Ariadne didn't think she ever would be, even after Saito's check landed in her shiny new account in the Caymans. But she was pleased with it: Cobb would blend in here, and Arthur would like it, she thought.

She hoped Arthur would like it, anyway. It was his level; he'd be spending most of the job somewhere in this hotel, running around and distracting projections while Cobb, Saito, Eames, and the mark dreamt a level deeper. So she was designing for the mark, yes-- but mostly for Arthur.

When she'd started the mock-up for the hotel, she'd made two lists. The first was titled _Purpose_, and the second, _Arthur_. On the first list she'd written _camouflage_, _defense_, and _legitimacy_. On the second, she'd just written _details_.

This level had to hide who Cobb and Arthur and Eames were, to project a kind of businesslike extravagance that would distract the mark and make him feel as though he _should_ be comfortable, without letting him entirely shake the feeling of potential danger. And above all, it had to be safe-- a defensive network of mazes for Arthur to navigate, which meant that it had to be a place Arthur would understand instinctively.

So: details. Efficiency. Mirrored surfaces, so he could see around corners if he needed to. Low-backed sofas in the lobby, so as not to impede sight or progress. Elevators that were always ready to open, no matter what floor one happened to be on. Heavy chrome lamps placed on console tables like weapons, impossible stairs crowding the fire escapes, elevator shafts that became hallways. And all of it saying _quality_, in a low voice with crisp, sharp corners.

She sighed, and flicked a finger against one of the wine glasses hanging above the bar. It rang out with a sweet crystalline note, half a pitch different from the sound the glass hanging next to it would make if similarly provoked. It was good work. Really good, and she should stop messing around with it. She was nearly out of time, anyway-- less than a minute by her watch, the last time she checked-- not long enough to revise the rooftop shortcut again, so she should just take a deep breath, calm down, and

Eames was sitting on a stool, looking down at her while his teeth crunched into an apple left over from someone's lunch. Ariadne shook off the familiar groggy feeling of the dream, and sat up. She pulled her pawn out of her pocket, and swung it between two fingers like a bell, satisfied with the way the top-heavy piece felt.

"You know," said Eames around a cheekful of apple, "I think I'm feeling a bit short-changed, love."

"What?" asked Ariadne, sliding the needle out of her wrist and not really paying attention. She'd learned that you either needed to pay attention to Eames all of the time, or not at all. The former was too frustrating, so she'd settled on the latter.

"You finished my level in three days," he said, smirking. "Yusuf's in two. This is, what? Day six? Our Arthur's beginning to feel a bit neglected, I think."

"I just want to make sure it's okay," Ariadne said, slightly stung. "And it's done now, anyway. I'm not off-schedule. I'll show him tomorrow morning, when he gets in."

"Mm," conceded Eames. He took another bite of his apple, chewing it slowly, consideringly. Swallowed. "He wants me to teach you to forge," he said at length. "Arthur does. Or at least how to recognize one."

"Cobb didn't say anything about that."

"Cobb doesn't say a lot of things," Eames said agreeably, getting off the stool and approaching the case. "We'll start with six minutes," he told her, attaching an additional length of tubing to the drip, and putting a clean needle on each of the end ports. He moved the case to lay between their two lounge chairs.

"Just don't expect much in the way of décor," he told her, and slid the needle into his wrist. She did the same, wincing at the bruising that was beginning to show around the puncture wound. Soon, she'd have to start wearing long sleeves all the time in order to hide the needle marks.

"Ready?" he asked.

She nodded, and watched as he stretched his arm over to push

"It's all about reflections," Cobb told her. "The quickest way to spot a cheat is to find a reflective surface the forger doesn't know about. So look around," and she saw that she was sitting in a diner, on the dingy red vinyl cushions of a corner booth, "and see if you can find me."

She looked. The windows were her first target; it was night outside, and the darkness made a mirror in shadow. But Cobb's weird blue eyes met hers easily, and she kept looking. The tabletop was sticky, and not a good reflective surface-- same with the tile floor. She checked the stainless steel napkin dispenser, the table knife inside her roll of silverware, and the oily sheen on the coffee in front of her. Finally she caught a flash of heavy stubble on the metal top of the salt shaker and looked up, triumphant.

Eames stared back at her, looking pleased. "Not bad at all, darling," he told her. He slid out of the booth, and offered her his arm. "Let's take a walk, shall we?"

in a field as large as the world, the grasses fading to straw under the unrelenting heat of the sun. The sky was heavy and oppressive, and Ariadne wanted to duck down low, to be less of a target on this vast plain.

"It's harder," Eames said, sounding professorial, "to recognize a forgery somewhere like this: no glass, no metal, no still water. But it's also much more difficult to convince the mark that a place like this is real. Unless the target is a hermit or has a fondness for trekking, you're more likely to need urban settings. Which makes the forgery much more difficult on a technical level."

Ariadne nodded. "You'll need to know how the reflections work in the second dream, then," she reasoned, wincing as she thought of the bar, with all its glass and polished wood. "There's going to be a lot of them."

"Lovely," Eames said, dryly. "I do love a challenge. Now," he said, resuming the lesson, "forgery is also a matter of familiarity. There are bit parts-- one-off composite characters that we create-- and then there are the true cheats, the copies of someone the mark knows. One-offs aren't usually too dangerous, although sometimes they can read as one dimensional."

The grasses flattened out and wove themselves together, and a little girl of about eight with a short blond bob was standing on a sisal rug in a suburban living room. She wore a neat grey skirt, and a sweater with a striped blue and gold tie showing at the collar of the blouse underneath. Her black tights had a run in them at the knee, and there was a scuff on the toe of her left shoe. She was a perfect replica of an English schoolchild, but that was all she was.

Ariadne thought, _Her skirt is the exact right length, that never happens_, and Eames said, "Damn. That was quick," sounding surprised. "What was off about her?" he asked, his eyebrows drawing together.

"Her clothes fit too well," Ariadne explained. "Kids grow fast. Her skirt should either be a hair too long, or a little short, or tight around the waist or something. A school uniform is something that her mother would buy at the beginning of the term and it would have to last all year, even if she grew."

"Fair enough," Eames said. "I'll take that into consideration, next time. You see the problem with one-offs, then?" he asked, and she nodded. "No depth. Cheats have the opposite problem-- there's too much depth in a real person to ever match them in a dream. Not exactly. So what one does is pick a few major characteristics-- speech patterns, walk, gestures-- and hope that the mark fills in the blanks on their own."

"What about appearance?" she asked, curious. "Is that more important than the other cues?"

"Not really," said Eames, but he was wearing Arthur's body. Badly, too: there was something off about the way he stood, like his center of gravity was lower by a few inches.

"That is-- really disconcerting," Ariadne said.

"The visual cues don't mean anything," Eames explained, using Arthur's mouth and vocal chords but not his voice, "if you haven't got the characteristics. It's like the difference between a wax model and the person the model represents." He straightened, somehow, dropped his shoulders and walked across the room to meet her, and he was Arthur before he took three steps.

Ariadne took a half step back. "Got it," she said, feeling the air go out of her lungs. "Jesus."

Arthur canted his head to the left a few degrees. "Trying to use a cheat on the mark can either go really badly, or really well," he said, his mouth quirking a little. "Familiarity means that the mark _knows_ the subject, and should be able to recognize any mistakes a forger makes. But familiarity can also mean that the mark will fill in the gaps on their own, and depending on the association-- positive, negative, indifferent, whatever-- might not _want_ to recognize the cheat as a forgery." Arthur was very close to her now, his voice intimate and close. "Ariadne," he began,

Ariadne shook her head, and looked back up at Eames. "You're a bastard," she informed him.

He laughed, delighted with himself. "And you're lovely," he said, returning the compliment. "And while I would love to stay and pursue this particular line

Ariadne opened her eyes and turned to glare at Eames, sprawled in the chair next to hers. "I'm going to put a rabid polar bear in your level," she told him. "It will be lonely and mad for attention and _only yours will do_."

Behind her, Arthur cleared his throat. "I'd like to see that," he told her. She felt for the pawn in her pocket, and relaxed when it tumbled awkwardly in her palm. "Eames was showing you how the forgeries work?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said. Arthur _did_ drop his shoulders when he stood like that. She hadn't noticed before.

"She's a natural," Eames said readily. "Not easy to fool at all." He looked back at Ariadne with a light in his eye that she didn't like. "Well. With one exception, maybe."

"Seriously, Eames," she threatened. "Rabid polar bears. Wolves. Maybe some weasles, too." He held up his hands in surrender, and wandered off to do whatever it was that Eames did when not harassing the rest of the team.

Arthur raised an eyebrow, and sat down on the chair Eames had occupied. "I came to ask you if you were done with the second level, but it sounds like you have more interesting things planned."

She shook her head. "Just Eames being Eames," she said lightly, and took a breath. "I can show you, if you'd like. The level," she clarified. "It's finished." She got up to get two new needles, then handed him one. "I could use your advice about reflections, anyways," she said, and they lay back to dream together.

  
_ **Up top.** _

"Cobb says you're coming in with us."

Ariadne looked up from her laptop where she was composing a letter to her advisor in Boston. (_Dr. Venables_, it began, _I have no interest in your comments on my latest seminar paper, because I am currently busy breaking physics in a dream-world in order to commit corporate espionage and a dozen other crimes._ She didn't think she'd send it.)

Arthur pulled out the chair opposite hers at the little café table, looking tense. "I am," she said, cautious, shutting the laptop. "I want to be able to help if something goes wrong."

Arthur flagged down a waiter and ordered a coffee in careless French. "You want to be able to help," he repeated, after the waiter went back inside. "That's nice of you."

Ariadne bristled. "Look, if you don't think I can do this, just say so."

"That's not what I meant." His mouth was flat, humorless. He looked at a point over her head. "I don't like this," he said after a long moment. "I don't like this job, and I don't like that Cobb wants you in the dream. He promised Miles you wouldn't go in, you know."

She did know that. She wondered if Cobb had made a similar promise to Arthur, as well. "Cobb doesn't want me in the dream," she told Arthur. "I told him I was coming in, not the other way around. It's my choice, not his."

"Ariadne," Arthur began, but she cut him off.

"I know it's not safe," she said. "I know Mal's probably--" _certainly_\-- "somewhere in Cobb's head, and she could hurt us. And I know that none of you need to worry about another tourist, but I've just got this feeling," she finished lamely.

"You've just got this feeling," Arthur said, "and that's all I'm going to get." His mouth twitched a little at the sides. The waiter came back with his coffee, and they sat in silence for a few minutes. Arthur pulled his die out of some hidden pocket, and tossed it gently from one hand to the other.

She watched the red acrylic cube arc between his hands, and broke the silence to ask, "Why did you pick a die?"

He rolled the die into his fist, concealing it from her view. "That's a personal question," he observed.

"Not really," she said. "Not unless the reason is personal. Is it?"

"No," he admitted, and resumed his game of catch.

"Mine's not, either," she told him, and smiled. "Just the obvious pawn-in-the-game reference. Plus, it was metal so it wouldn't break, and I could alter the weight by drilling it out a little."

He bobbed his head. "Makes sense." He caught the die with his right hand, and looked down at it, considering. He looked up, and slid it back into the invisible pocket where it lived. "Everybody knows that the dice are loaded," he said. "Leonard Cohen."

Ariadne felt her eyebrows climb upwards. "That's it? Your reason's Leonard Cohen?"

"It's a good song," he said, mild. "The man can work a suit."

"This is so disappointing," she said, not really exaggerating. "I had this whole thing in my head where you were some sort of Vegas card-shark, or Sky Masterson or something."

Arthur smirked a little. "Sorry to let you down. You can blame my tie, if you like." He was wearing a grey one this time, tucked behind a black vest.

"I just might," Ariadne told him. She sighed a little, then said, "About me coming into the dream--"

"You'll be fine," Arthur interrupted. "You want to help, you can help, I get it. I'm. You know what you're doing in there, you're not a tourist. That wasn't why I was angry. This is just a bad situation, and I don't like things I can't fix."

"Yeah," Ariadne agreed, smiling. "Everybody knows that the dice are loaded," she said.

"Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed," Arthur replied.

_ **Third layer down.** _

Saito and Arthur were in the office, passing forms back and forth across the desk when she opened the door.

"I had a question," she said, sticking her head around the door. "Oh," she said, getting a look at the piles of paperwork on the desk: bank statements and invoices and a stack of ten or twelve passports rubber-banded together. "You're busy," she said inanely. "I'll come back in a while."

"It's okay," Arthur told her, while at the same time Saito said, "Please, come in."

Saito removed a box of credit cards from the chair next to his, and gestured for her to take a seat.

"What's up?" asked Arthur. He looked a little creased around the edges: not crumpled, but not as crisp as he usually was. She hadn't seen much of him since they had talked about her coming into the dream. Eames said he obsessed before jobs; Yusuf said Arthur was crossing a few palms, just in case they needed an escape route.

Which had led to her unwelcome midnight revelation the night before. "I have a very stupid question to ask," she told them. "No one's said-- what happens after we land in L.A.? I don't even know if I'm supposed to pack, or for how long, or where I'm going next. I'm guessing I need a toothbrush, but other than that-- I have no idea. Are we all going somewhere, after, or am I just getting on a plane back to Paris?" She let her voice trail off, and suddenly realized that she was exhausted. Seven hours before they left, and all of her energy seemed to have drained out of her like sand from a sieve.

"I am flying to Los Angeles on business," Saito said after a moment, with a gentle emphasis on the word _I_. "I have several pressing engagements with an American firm headquartered in southern California, and will be staying several weeks before returning to Tokyo. This is a matter of public record," he told her. "You, I presume, are flying back to the United States to visit your family." He addressed this last to Ariadne, but looked to Arthur for confirmation.

"Friends," Arthur corrected. Saito ducked his head in recognition.

"I don't have any friends in L.A.," Ariadne objected. "I grew up in Connecticut."

Arthur nodded, unconcerned. "Your old roommate, Laurel, is getting married in L.A. next week," he said, as though they'd discussed her travel plans at length prior to this and she ought to have remembered them. "Her fiancé's family lives out there. It's a spur-of-the-moment thing-- groom's father isn't doing so well-- so you weren't sure you could make it. You managed to scrape together enough frequent flier miles to make it work, though. She said she's looking forward to seeing you, and she'll pick you up at baggage claim."

"Laurel's getting married?" Ariadne was a little dumbfounded, and her brain stalled over the first point. She hadn't thought about Laurel in years. "Wait, did you _talk_ to her?"

"You really should check your Facebook more often," Arthur chided. "You're a crappy friend." He tossed her a packet of papers. "That's the email thread, and a recent picture-- he looks like a nice guy-- and her online gift registry. I wasn't sure what you'd want to get her."

She stared at him, disbelieving, the old anger bubbling back up inside her. He'd hacked her email, contacted her _friend_\-- Arthur looked back, unaffected. "You can't just _do_ that sort of thing," she began, breaking off when she felt a light touch on her elbow.

Saito raised his eyebrows. "We are about to drug a man who has never harmed us, and break his mind into patterns which we find pleasing. We will tell him to be frightened, to dissolve his bonds of trust, to believe a truth of our making, and we will do this for monetary recompense. I believe that the outcome will ultimately be good, both for us and for Robert Fischer-- but this is a business decision, at the end of things. In such a light," he said, wryly, "I think one can forgive a slight invasion of privacy."

She closed her eyes briefly, then nodded. "Fair enough," she said.

"You didn't have a cover," Arthur said. "What we are about to do-- have been doing-- is very illegal, and I didn't have the time I normally do to create an identity. I had to work with whatever I could find." It was an explanation, not an apology.

"Okay," she said. It wasn't, not really, but she was too tired and too aware of the illegalities of the situation to argue. "Okay. I understand. Next time, though, ask me first." Then a thought struck her head-on: "Oh, god, I'm going to have to find a dress." She glared at Arthur. "I don't suppose you took care of that as well?" she asked.

Arthur shook his head. "It seemed a little presumptuous," he said, and she couldn't help the startled laugh that jumped out of her.

"That is _not_ the word you want to use right now," she told him, and stalked out of the office to go grab her bag, because she had less than six hours to get her fish to her neighbors and pack for a con job and a surprise wedding and she didn't even have a damn _dress_.

  
_ **Fourth layer down.** _

It was a very long way down, longer than should have been possible. The gravity wasn't right. She began to wonder if this was how Alice felt, halfway down the rabbit hole.

_Wake up_, she thought, falling. _Wake up, wake up, this is the kick, _wake up, Ariadne.

The air buckled underneath her, and she was on a concrete floor. The ceiling fell in a slurry of fire, and she was floating as an elevator fell around her, dragging her with it.

The van hit the water.

The river was cold, and she had a moment of panic before she forced herself to relax, to wait until she felt the pressure of Eames and Fischer swimming past, forcing their way out of the windows. She opened her eyes, and Arthur passed her the mouthpiece. She took a breath, grateful they'd practiced this so many times in the final few days. She passed the mouthpiece to Yusuf, calm now, following the plan. The mouthpiece went back and forth, from Yusuf to Arthur to her and back again, giving Eames the time he needed with Fischer.

Cobb and Saito were unresponsive in their seats, still and breathless, dreaming. They were going to have to find their own ways out; they'd missed the kick. At least Mal wouldn't be there to hunt them.

Arthur illuminated his watch, the green glow eerie in the dark water of the van. He pushed up his sleeve to show her the time, and held up one finger. One minute. She held up hers in return, and passed him the oxygen. Arthur swam back to Cobb and Saito. A thin pinkish plume was rising from Saito's chest where he'd been shot ages ago, minutes in this layer. Arthur looked at her, as though to ask what had gone wrong. She shook her head slowly, and held up her finger again. _Just a minute_, she thought. _I'll tell you about it in_

  
_ **Sixth layer down.** _

There was a moment where she thought, _This world is not real_, a twist of vertigo which made her doubt the physics of this new place. But she found her pawn, warm to the touch with body heat, and felt its familiar imperfect weight, the rough gouge of the drill at its base.

They were on a plane, and it was beginning its descent. It was going to land in Los Angeles, and she would meet Laurel at the baggage claim. That was real. Behind her, she heard Saito inhale roughly, then cough. Yusuf was walking back to his seat from the lavatory, and Eames was saying something to the flight attendant which, from the looks of it, was probably vastly inappropriate. Across the aisle, Cobb had his face turned away toward the window. His tray table was down, his top laying on its side and rolling in a semi-circle with the pitch of the plane as it banked. After a moment, his hand came up to stop the toy's motion. Fischer was staring absently at the hot towel in his hands. He looked tired, but unhurt.

Ariadne closed her eyes and breathed, relieved.

Behind her, Saito began speaking to someone in Japanese, the words indistinct over the engine noise. He broke off in the middle of whatever it was he was saying to cough: a rattling, wet sound. She winced.

"It's all right," Arthur murmured. She opened her eyes to see him standing in the aisle to open the overhead compartment. "It's just a hold over. It'll be gone in a couple minutes." He glanced at the hand in her lap, white-knuckled around her totem. "You did great," he told her, under his breath. "Amazing."

She wanted to smile. She was a little too shaky to manage it.

"Sir," the flight attendant said pleasantly, "I'm afraid you'll have to return to your seat. We'll be landing shortly."

"Of course," Arthur said, polite. He rested his hand on Ariadne's shoulder for a moment, squeezing briefly, and then sat back down. Ariadne half remembered the dry press of his mouth against hers and bit her lip.

The landing was rough, as though the pilot were as impatient to get off the plane as his passengers. Ariadne was stiff as she stood up, aching from a lack of movement. She followed Eames down the tunnel, Fischer and Cobb and Arthur behind. On the train to the terminal, crowded with teenagers and businessmen and a miserable wailing toddler, she heard Cobb ask Arthur behind her, "How long?"

She didn't hear his answer. The train warned that the doors would not rebound, and sounded an electronic bell.

"Phillipa's youngest was two," Cobb replied to whatever it was Arthur had said, absently. "Twenty-five, thirty years this time."

She shuddered, and held on as the train accelerated.

  
_ **Out.** _

Laurel was waiting at baggage claim as promised, tall and round and tan, bouncing on the balls of her feet like an over-eager Labrador. Ariadne lost sight of Eames and Yusuf during Laurel's onslaught of hugs and easy chatter, but it didn't really matter. The pawn was curled so tightly in her fingers that she thought the shape ought to be visible on the outside of her fist.

"You look like hell," Laurel said, and her voice was clear and bell-like over the echoing chaos of LAX. Ariadne tried to focus. "But whatever, you've got two days until the wedding. I can take you back to the hotel, and you can sleep for the next thirty-six hours. You won't be missing much, anyway," she said, shepherding Ariadne towards the baggage claim, not letting her get a word in. "Dave's mother is organizing a brunch thing for tomorrow morning, and she's been calling every three minutes about the flowers and napkins and shit. You don't have to come, lucky girl. I think I might drown myself in mimosas."

"But you're happy?" Ariadne asked the first thing that came into her head, watching as the suitcases slid down onto the carousel. It suddenly seemed important to know that someone was happy, and certain of that happiness.

"Yeah," said Laurel, after giving her a long, measuring look. "I really am."

Ariadne nodded. Laurel was happy; people could be happy in reality. "That's good," she replied. She thought she saw Cobb walking towards the taxi stand alone, pulling his suitcase behind him as he left the airport. "I'm really glad," she told Laurel, swallowing around a lump in her throat, and then, "That's my bag, there." Before she could grab hold of the handle, a man in a dark suit lifted it up and set it down at her feet.

"There you go, miss," Arthur said, and she saw him slide a white business card into the front pocket of her suitcase as he straightened up. He wasn't subtle about it. "Have a nice day," he said, and smiled. Then he turned and walked off towards the rental car counters.

"Someone you know?" Laurel asked, eying Arthur's backside appreciatively.

"Shut up." Ariadne elbowed her friend in the ribs, echoing the hundreds of times she and Laurel had had this conversation, or another like it. It was easy to be an echo. "He was on the plane with me."

"Nice," said Laurel, and they started walking toward the main exit. "Whenever I fly, I wind up sitting next to the guy who wants to talk to me about his walk with Christ for four hours. Tell me you're going to call him," she said, the sliding doors opening as they approached to blast them with the scent of ozone and smog, "or I'm going to leave you here in airport hell."

"I don't have his number," Ariadne protested weakly. Further up the curb, Saito was getting into a long black limo that looked like it wanted to be a bullet train when it grew up. Robert Fischer was nowhere within sight.

Laurel glanced down at Ariadne's suitcase and raised her eyebrow.

"I'm not going to _use_ it," Ariadne muttered, but the lie rang false even in her ears.

"Yeah, you are," Laurel said, satisfied. "Now tell me what you're wearing to my wedding. You never said."

  
_ **There.** _

Ariadne absently flicked one of the glasses on the tray with her fingernail, listening to its note, buried underneath the excited chatter of wedding guests lubricated with plenty of alcohol. She flicked a second. It sounded identical to the first, and Ariadne fumbled in her bag for her pawn. It was there, cool from hiding in her clutch all night, familiar in its weight. Everything was real, even if it didn't feel like it was.

Laurel and Dave were making the rounds together, hugging relatives and friends and laughing. They looked exhausted and happy. Ariadne was just exhausted, with no room for anything else.

She had thought she would never want to sleep again, afraid that she would slip, somehow, from her natural dreams into a limbo where Mal would hound her and she would build world after world, unable to wake up. But after Laurel dropped her off outside the hotel, gawping at the smooth white art deco facade of the building -- _Trust the architect_, Laurel had said, _to insist on staying at someplace other than a Hampton Inn_\-- she had done what Laurel had predicted at the airport and slept fitfully through most of the next day. She had woken up every few hours with a start, however, gasping, groping for her totem, waiting for her heart to stop racing.

She was still tired even now, watching couples sway awkwardly around the dance floor. Her shoes, purchased in a rush before leaving Paris, didn't fit right, and her feet were beginning to ache from standing stupidly alone in a corner all night. Ariadne had spoken to a few people at the beginning of the evening-- short, stilted conversations about her relationship to the bride-- but couldn't shake the feeling that the room was full of projections, that she was invading someone else's dream and had no business being there.

Ariadne waited for a likely opportunity, and then moved to intercept the couple on their way to the next table. "Wanted to say goodbye before I left," she told Laurel, smiling, and kissed her cheek. "You look gorgeous. I'm sorry I can't stay longer; I'm about done for, I think," she said, while Laurel made protesting noises.

"Congratulations," she told Dave, kissing him as well. She hadn't had a chance to say more than three words to him since she'd arrived, but that was how weddings were. He seemed nice enough, though. He looked at Laurel like she was everything he had ever wanted and Laurel seemed just as besotted, which was reassuring.

"You're not allowed to disappear again," Laurel told her, fiercely. "Just because you've run away to Paris doesn't mean we don't exist anymore."

"I know," said Ariadne. Laurel looked at her, eyes narrowed. "I _know_," she said. "I'll try harder," she promised.

"Do that," said Laurel, swatting at Ariadne's shoulder with the back of her hand. "And call the airport guy. I'll know if you don't," she threatened, and was swept off by one of Dave's aunts to meet another new relative.

Outside on the sidewalk, Ariadne leaned against the warm brick facade of the building, waiting for her cab to arrive. She tilted her head back: no stars in Los Angeles. The sky was the funny dark orange of bad air and late nights and light pollution, and she thought idly about designing sunsets and sunrises that could last for days, never fading.

Her taxi pulled up, and she got in. Gave the driver the address. Sat back and watched the tail lights of other cars pass outside her window. It was odd to think of all those cars having other people inside of them, all drifting off in the dark, all headed for various unknown directions for inscrutable purposes. She thought, _I could make a labyrinth of cars, a moving maze within a tangle of streets_, and had a moment of panic: she was underwater, she couldn't breathe, Yusuf and Arthur had taken the oxygen and left her--

Ariadne dug through her clutch until she found her pawn. "Real," she whispered, looking at the little brass chess piece. "This is real." She thought for a moment, and then laid the pawn in her lap, reaching back into her clutch until she found the little white card she had slid into her purse with her cellphone and room key.

The card was blank, smooth and crisp, except for a string of numbers written across it in a spiky black hand. Quickly, before she could over-think her decision, she keyed the numbers into her phone and hit _send_.

The call went to voicemail. Arthur's voice, tinny over the imperfect receiver, calmly informed her that she had reached fifty-four eleven twenty-three forty five-hundred and twenty, and to please leave a message. He repeated the instructions in French, and then German. Arthur didn't sound like himself in German, she decided. It was too brusque to suit him.

The sudden tone in her ear surprised her and she realized she had no idea what she had wanted to say in the first place. She hit _end_ harder than was necessary, and then leaned back against the worn vinyl seat.

"Fuck," Ariadne said. "I'm a moron."

"No shame in that," said the cabbie, comfortingly. "We mostly all are."

It was after one when she crawled out of the cab, her feet protesting at the bite of the shoe straps against the blisters coming out on her skin. She picked her way to the elevators, tired and footsore and feeling foolishly lonely. The trip upstairs was blurred, and she might have dozed a little while propping herself against the mirrored wall. She woke up long enough to find her room, standing in front of the door for a long moment before remembering how the key card worked.

"My feet hurt," she told the door while it thought about unlocking. She felt a little drunk, although she had only had enough champagne for the toast. "Hurry up, please." The lock flashed green, and she pushed the door open, locked it again behind her, and continued over to the bed as though pulled by a wire.

"Shoes don't pinch in the dream," she informed her feet, wincing as she took off her shoes. The back of her left heel was a bloody mess. She should take off her dress, she thought. Hang it up. Go wash her face and get under the covers properly, but she gave it up as too much work. Instead, she flopped backwards onto the mattress, pulling her pawn out of her clutch. She held it between her thumb and forefinger, letting it swing over her face.

She drifted, for a while.

There was a noise at the door, she realized some time later. A soft knocking sound. Ariadne fumbled with the chess piece, still dangling over her face, and nearly dropped it in her eye. She stood up, pawn tucked into her palm, and checked the peephole before moving to open the door.

In the part of her brain that wasn't exhausted, she noted with interest that she wasn't surprised at all to see Arthur, polished and sleek, standing in the hallway on the other side. She opened the door.

"Can I come in?" he asked, as though it were perfectly normal for him to be outside her hotel room at a quarter to two in the morning.

"You're here," she observed, her brain working slowly, and then realized she was blocking the door and moved aside to let him pass.

He waited until she had closed the door and locked it, and then said, "You called me." There was an incline at the end of the statement: not enough to make it a question, but too much for complete certainty.

"Yes," Ariadne said. This was all happening to someone else, a long way off. "I called you."

"Right," said Arthur, nodding once, and he was right there in front of her, a hand coming up to cradle the back of her head as he leaned down to take her mouth, warm and fast and hungry. _Arthur is kissing me_, Ariadne marvelled, and squeezed her hand around her totem. _This is real_, she thought, and suddenly she wasn't far away at all, she was right here in this room, and she was awake.

Arthur pulled back, searching her face. "Do you," he began, and took a half step back. "I'm sorry," he said, and it was amazing how much distance came with those words. "My mistake."

"God, _shut up_," she told him, and laid her left hand up against his jaw. He hadn't shaved before he left, wherever he had been before coming here. "You're not wrong, I'm sorry," she said, leaning up and pressing kiss after kiss to his neck, "I'm sorry, I just wasn't sure I was real," she said, finding his chin with her lips. She opened her right palm, showing him the way the pawn had pressed its imprint into her flesh. "You should kiss me again. It's worth a shot."

Arthur laughed, startled and relieved. "I should," he agreed, and pressed her up against the door. This time she kissed back properly, wrapping herself around him as far as she could while he pushed closer. He tasted like cheap coffee and peppermint, one hand knotted in her hair, the other pulling her leg up to wrap around him. "Please," he said, breathing heavy into the curve of her neck. "Please, you just--," his hand slid up under her dress, fingers splayed over her thigh like a cage. She might have bruises in the morning.

Ariadne let her head fall back against the door, her own hands scrabbling at his coat, frustrated by the lack of skin. "Bed, we have a," she suggested, her words falling into his mouth as he surged up, biting at her lips, his thumb brushing over the edge of her underwear, searching for the damp heat beneath. "_Arthur_," she groaned, and pushed against his shoulders until he met her gaze. He was a mess, rumpled and flushed and eyes dilated, pressing hard against her stomach, and he was _real_. "We have a bed," Ariadne repeated, "_please_, I. Arthur, oh _god_," and he stepped back just far enough to let her slide down against him onto her unsteady feet, his hand still up her dress, hot against her back, pulling her towards him as he stumbled them both to the bed.

"Shit, _condom_," he said, "I don't--," and she opened her mouth and sucked a mark against his neck. Bit down lightly.

"Hang on," she said, and stepped away to open her suitcase. There was a box in the bottom, because she had been stupid and hopeful before she left Paris. When she turned back with the packet in hand, Arthur was sitting on the bed, coat off, his tie hanging loose around his neck. He was staring at her like she was every wonder of the world.

"Oh," she said, surprised. She hadn't known it was like that. Not for him.

"_Ariadne_," he said, and she met him halfway.

  
_ **Here.** _

It is six o'clock when she wakes up, mostly dark with the hotel curtains pulled tight. There is someone in bed next to her. Ariadne sits up, and notices that she is naked. The back of her heel hurts, and lips feel raw and abused. She is sore elsewhere, as well.

The figure next to her (_Arthur_, she remembers, and wants someone else to recognize just how surprising and momentous this fact is) opens his eyes. "Hey," he says, blinking. He finds her hand in the tangle of sheets, squeezing her fingers. "Need to go check?" He looks over to her suitcase: the pawn is sitting on top of her toiletries bag, just where she left it the night before. She loves that it's not weird, that he can recognize the impulse.

She shakes her head. "No," she says, certain. "I remember how we got here. This is real." 

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: (1) Since when do I write fic about movies I've only seen once? This cannot be a good precedent to set. (2) I started writing this as a response for a prompt over on inception_kink. It got a little out of hand. (3) I'm fairly certain this is the longest fannish story I've ever written. Well, written and finished. (4) All errors are mine, and the world(s) in question belong to Christopher Nolan. (5) Fun fact: the last time I wrote het, I was over in HP world, waiting for Order of the Phoenix to be published. How time does fly.


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